AG Gonzales to inspect Supermax
M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
Published November 17, 2006 at midnight
The nation’s top law enforcement official has agreed to tour Supermax prison in Florence to see for himself whether tougher security provisions are needed to protect the public from the "baddest of the bad," convicts, Sen. Ken Salazar said Friday.
Salazar met Friday with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss staffing and security issues that have drawn attention to Supermax, where the federal government holds convicted terrorists and other notorious prisoners.
The federal Bureau of Prisons already has agreed to add 18 new security staff by the end of the year, although that still would leave the facility short of the 240 employees the prison had when it opened in 1994.
Meanwhile, critics have called for adding a perimeter fence, creating new radio communications with area law enforcement agencies and other security upgrades in the wake of a recent report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general’s office questioning security.
Salazar said that at Friday’s meeting, Gonzales agreed to tour the facility with him soon.
No date has been set, but, "The very fact that he will visit Supermax should put enough of a spotlight on Supermax to ensure that these security issues that we’ve been talking about are in fact addressed," Salazar said.
Salazar, a Democrat, and fellow Coloradan Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, both have toured the facility and pressed the security issue after the Inspector General questioned whether communications involving high-risk, convicted terrorists were being consistently read and analyzed. Salazar said he asked Gonzales to make sure the prison had adequate linguistics experts, including Arabic speakers, to do the job.
"I tried to impress on the Attorney General that Supermax is not just another prison," Salazar said.
"There obviously are a host of other prisons, and Supermax contains less than one-tenth of one percent of all the federal inmate population. But they’re there for a reason. they’re the baddest of the bad."
"I think the needs of Supermax are needs that need to be prioritized," Salazar said.
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